Black & White (2001) open source game engine sees a first release - eviltoast
Black & White from Lionhead Studios released originally back in 2001 went on to great reviews, and won various awards. Sadly, it's one game that has also been lost to time but the openblack project plans to revive it with open source.
  • geography082@lemm.eeEnglish
    30·
    2 months ago

    For no reason, or non logical explanation, and after playing thousand of games in my life, I feel love for this particular game. It reminds me good times. Like the game Sacrifice.

    • heyoni@lemm.eeEnglish
      61·
      2 months ago

      I really loved this game. There was something to it that I think went on to inspire spore and maybe other games too.

    • Ohi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Sacrifice! Wow, great times. I remember the voice acting in that was astounding.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
      19·
      2 months ago

      You can accuse Peter Molyneaux for a lot of things, but he did manage to come up with some interesting wacky shit interspersed with all the exaggerations and scams.

        • PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.worldEnglish
          15·
          2 months ago

          They should give him 3 months max with a team and then put the developers in witness protection so he can’t give them any more feedback and they can finish a great game in peace.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Scared the crap out of me when it happened too. Wouldn’t work today though, as my wife named our user accounts and I doubt they have a recording of someone whispering “Mr Bitchtits”.

  • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
    25·
    2 months ago

    This sounds awesome! The Black and White series is one of the most requested games on GoG.

    Hopefully, the devs can work out some the wonkiness in the orginal.

    • Coskii@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      I will hurl fire, brimstone, and feces at towns which do not believe in me! And then send them an uncharacteristically good natured tortoise to smooth things over from all the death and destruction that rained from the sky mere moments before.

      My creature thinks I’m a benevolent god. Which means it must also think the world outside our domain is in a constant state of annihilation.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.caEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        Poison the food, burn down the houses, kill all the villagers, then migrate a couple loyal believers to breed me some new followers.

        So much easier to grow new ones than to convert existing ones.

  • RacerX@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    Oooooooh we’ve got this notion that we’d quite like to sail the ocean…

  • million@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    I wonder how they will translate over the AI from the original. That was a huge part of that game, so much so that I would say Black and White with a different AI isn’t the same game.

    • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      Demis Hassabis is a genius in the field of artificial intelligence, but the AI of Black & White is 20+ years old and runs on pretty limited hardware (by today’s standards).

      • million@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        2 months ago

        Sure, you could probably write an awesome new AI for black and white but you could also write an awesome 3d renderer for the original Mario World.

        My point was that the AI is really core to the game, and I am not sure how they would replicate it in an accurate manner. If you wrote a new AI it would be a different game.

        • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          What I meant was that it will not be that hard to replicate. It might feel complicated and deep but most likely isn’t that complex. Sure - without analyzing the original source code (which isn’t legally available as far as I know) - it might be impossible to recreate the exact behavior, but it should be possible to mimic the behavior - it might just take a few attempts to fine tune the input parameters.

      • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        That’s the thing - AI isn’t about size, it’s about categorizing the state of the world. If you can understand an action in context and possible responses, a Markov chain can learn and respond appropriately with the processing of a calculator - it really doesn’t take much

  • Rakonat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    What I wouldn’t get for another proper entry in this series. Game came out like 20 years too soon. We have proper VR now!

  • brygphilomena@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    I always felt this game was begging for a VR remake.

    I’m surprised that it didn’t become one of the first.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    I’ve got a copy of this somewhere. It could be in my closet…or Vermont. I should find it and yeet some villagers into the ocean again.

  • Etterra@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    2 months ago

    Oh hey I was recently cleaning out stuff and threw this out. It was from some multi-game bundle box. My current computer doesn’t even have a drive heh

    • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      maybe i’m just a dork but that’s why we’ve got an old usb 3.5 disk drive and shit. I’m not losing all that old media if I can help it.

    • astrsk@fedia.io
      5·
      2 months ago

      Recommend making an image of it as disc rot and degradation will be a thing. DVD shelf life is pretty wide at 30-100 years.

    • geography082@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Not sure if there are images around, should be, but would be wonderful to share the iso